


A Better Son (Or Daughter)

by ehmazing



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Siblings, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 18:51:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9671537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ehmazing/pseuds/ehmazing
Summary: Artemis Sterling did not have a sister.





	

Artemis Sterling did not have a sister.

He was the first child of Lord and Lady Sterling, born on a sunny afternoon in spring. The midwife congratulated Lady Amelia on her new son as she wiped his red brow, ignoring his deafening cries.

“And such a short, easy labor for you, Your Ladyship!” she said, smiling as she handed over the bundle of screaming baby. “I would almost think you’ve done this before!”

“It feels as if I have,” Lady Amelia said. "Maybe the mothering instincts kicked in early." Her head felt heavy as she took her son into her arms, as if her skull was filled with fog, but she thought nothing of it. She was sweat-drenched and exhausted and trying to quiet a newborn that seemed intent on crying until the ceiling came down. She asked the midwife for headache powder and a page to fetch her husband.

After Lord Emmett toasted his son with a glass of champagne and Lady Amelia slipped into a much-needed nap, Artemis was rocked to sleep at last by a nameless, faceless servant girl whom everyone remembered and whom no one remembered at all. He was not laid in his crib by his sister, fourteen years his senior, heir to their father's lands. He did not fall asleep holding her hand.

 

* * *

 

Lord Emmett Sterling did not die in a war.

He was hunting in the Felicity Wilds and was mauled brutally by some creature that abandoned the body long before his guards recovered it. The shock of the tragedy made the Sterling family feel ill with grief, made all of Neverwinter feel ill at the thought of such a powerful man dying so suddenly and cruelly. Many citizens too had fallen prey to such attacks of late, parents and children killed by unknown and unseen beasts with such regularity that all were happy enough to put it out of their minds once the deaths seemed to stop.

Lord Emmett was buried by his wife and son. He did not have a daughter to stand at the grave with them, pouring wine onto the freshly-turned soil so that her father's soul would not go thirsty in the afterlife.

After the mourning period passed, Lady Amelia did not spoil her son because he was the second-born and her youngest, unlikely to ever inherit the manor. She spoiled him because he was her only family left, her beloved baby boy, and she did not want him to grow up feeling burdened by the power that would one day rest on his head. She did not have another child who studied law day and night, who met with tutors for hours to learn the way of lordship, who stunned all with her intelligence and wit and magical ability at the young age of eighteen. Lady Amelia had only Artemis, and she could not think of a reason that he should have to work so hard while so young.

Artemis grew up in luxury and laziness. No one made him cry by refusing to lose at board games. No one yelled at him for touching her things without permission. No one mussed his hair beyond fixing and called him “Farty Arty."

No one prepared him, really, for anything.

 

* * *

 

When Artemis was eight years old, there was no attack on Ironstone Manor.

He was not awoken in the middle of the night by bangs and shouts, did not run through the halls in his bare feet to his sister’s room where she pulled him inside and hid him in the closet with orders to stay quiet or else. He did not wait there for hours, curled up beneath her gowns and shoes, hands clasped over his mouth so that no one would hear him breathe.

Nothing was stolen from the family vault. Nothing of unimaginable value, no object that thrummed with power like a plucked string that Artemis’ great-great grandfather had buried deep behind the walls hoping—praying—that no one would ever find it there.

Artemis did not fall asleep on the floor and was not carried to his room by his sister, her nightgown torn and burnt from the fight with the invaders. Her hands did not shake from the brief moment where they brushed the surface of whatever was hidden in that wrapped bundle that she knocked to the floor, the bundle that one of the hooded figures snatched up after it threw her against the ceiling like a rag doll. Artemis slept soundly in his bed all night, dreaming of nothing, and no sister laid awake for hours as she wondered what else had been hidden from her.

 

* * *

 

There was never a letter delivered from the Wilds.

Artemis did not snatch it from his sister’s desk, dancing out of reach when she yelled at him and tried to grab it back. “What’s an Animus Bell?” he didn’t ask, yelping when he ran into one of her piles of books and toppled over as the stack fell on him. He was in the library because he was bored, but there was no one in there for him to bother for company, nor anyone to enchant the books to pick themselves off of him and restack in perfect alphabetical order again.

“Something I hope you'll never see,” his sister didn’t say.

He left the library of his own accord. He was not picked up by a Mage Hand and dumped outside the door.

The library looked exactly the same when he visited again, for no reason, a few days later: books and pens arranged neatly on a spare desk, letters and notes in an illegible hand that no one ever bothered to read resting in its drawers. A woman’s shawl that belonged to his mother, or maybe the housekeeper, or maybe—Artemis’ brain stuttered as he tried to think, but he was never good with names and faces—to some noblewoman who’d come to visit and forgotten it months ago. When he ran his fingers through the fringe it felt exactly as familiar and foreign as it always did.

He closed the door behind him and had no qualms that anything, or anyone, was missing.

 

* * *

 

Lady Amelia Sterling did, in fact, fall ill.

It began as a cold that would not lift, and then a fever that would not break, and then a sleep that did not end. Artemis sat at his mother’s bedside day and night, one hand clasping hers and the other clenched between his teeth as he bit his nails to bloody stubs. She could not leave him, he thought, because he could not lead. He was too young. He was too unprepared. He was too terrified. And aside from his mother, there was no one else to look after him.

He hired healers and herbalists and hematologists. He hired soothsayers and sages and shamans. At last he hired a cleric, who looked his mother over once and only shook her head and reached for the incense to begin the blessing for a departing soul.

His mother died that very night. The next morning, Artemis Sterling, aged sixteen, was appointed Lord of Neverwinter.

 

* * *

 

Three years later, an old woman came to the manor gate and asked for an audience.

“Well look at you, Farty Arty,” she said with a fond smile when she entered the meeting hall. “I think you grew another foot since I last saw you.”

Artemis bristled at such a rude address—and from a stranger!

“How dare you!” he cried, springing from his chair. “You will apologize at once, you—you hag!”

The woman’s face fell slack with surprise at first, but then quickly it softened into sadness.

“I'm sorry, Your Lordship,” she said, bowing at the waist. “I thought that you’d recognize—I overstepped. I apologize.” Artemis glared at her for another moment before retaking his seat.

“State your purpose,” he demanded, crossing his arms. He waited for the woman to ask for some favor, though she certainly didn’t look destitute. She stood ramrod straight with her head held high, the way a noble would carry themselves. The audacity of her pride only made Artemis’ scowl deepen. His arms felt stiff with annoyance too—and his legs, for good measure. It was only when he felt his own heart freeze in place like a stopped clock that he realized a spell had taken hold.

The woman walked forward, unhindered by the guards she'd pinned in place like toy soldiers. She winced as she climbed the stairs, clutching her white staff for support. When she reached the top she perched on the arm of Artemis’ chair, studying him.

“I’m sorry about Mother,” she said softly. “I was caught up, possessed even, by the search for those damned—“ she bit her lip. “I should have come home. I should never have left. But I have to live with it now. With myself. That’s the power that corrupts: the power to eliminate consequences. If you can never fail, you can never learn.”

She reached out one hand and gently stroked his hair.

“I don’t want you to fail like I did, Arty,” she said, her voice quivering. “I don’t want you to face the evils I’ve faced. So I’m going to eliminate them. I’m going to make the world better. And if this is what I have to sacrifice to do it, well,” she chuckled, sniffing a little, “I’ve had worse.”

The old woman kissed him softly on the cheek before making her slow way back down the stairs. The spell kept him in place as she drew a circle on the floor with her staff, a bright blue light bursting forth around her. Before teleporting her away the light softened her features somewhat, obscuring the lines around her mouth and forehead, and for a moment she looked like someone else.

For a moment she looked like—

Like—

 _Lulu?_ Artemis did not think.

 

* * *

 

Artemis Sterling did not have a sister, and so he had no one to warn him about Wonderland.

Miracle Milk was not only rare, it was outright illegal. Even black-market warlocks refused to deal the potion. Artemis knew: he’d personally interrogated dozens of them.

“It’s brewed with tarrasque blood and has to be drunk within minutes of the harvesting,” one wizard explained to him tiredly. “No small amount of money is worth going after one of those things! And if even if the price is right, you’d have to be the greatest alchemist on the planet not to fuck up the potion. Almost everyone who’s been dumb enough to try it has died before they even swallowed the first sip. It’s a disaster waiting to happen, kid.” Artemis glared and he hastily amended, “It’s a disaster waiting to happen, _Your Lordship_.”

But Artemis kept searching. The stories said Miracle Milk changed you; drinking only a mouthful made you stronger, smarter, faster. A whole glass could make you wiser than any philosopher. An entire bowl could make you the most powerful leader on the continent.

Artemis wanted power more than anything. He wanted control. He wanted respect. He wanted to be someone who was taken seriously, for all his life something had nagged at him, some sense lurked in the back of his mind and told him he was not supposed to rule, that his title was meant for someone better than him.

It troubled him, especially because that someone did not exist. He had always been destined to rule. He had always been the rightful heir of Neverwinter. Why, then, did everything still feel so wrong?

That’s how the beam of light drew him in. It felt beautifully like destiny.

 

* * *

 

Before leaving on his quest, Artemis walked through the halls of Ironstone Manor with his butler to make sure everything would be kept to his liking during his absence.

“Have these all dusted,” he commanded, wrinkling his nose as they passed through the portrait gallery. “Cover them, actually. The less I see of my Great-Aunt Prudence’s face the better."

As the butler took notes, something caught Artemis’ eye as they approached the end of the hall, where the more recent Sterling family members were honored. His father’s portrait looked the same as it always did, but in between his mother and him was a blank stretch of wall. A dark patch of wallpaper lay in the center in the shape of a perfect rectangle. When Artemis put his finger to the spot it came away clean, untouched by dust.

But he couldn't remember any painting that had hung in its place.

“Have my portrait moved one spot to the left, next to my mother’s,” he ordered the butler. “The interior decorator must’ve screwed up the spacing. It’s throwing off the Feng Shui of the whole place!”

“Of course, Your Lordship. It will be done.”

Satisfied, Artemis moved on.

**Author's Note:**

> me: I don't understand the point of taz fanfic really  
> zumie: [agrees w/ my theory that the director was a noble and one-ups that what if she's also related to Sterling]  
> me: ………………………fucK
> 
> this'll probably be so jossed but I wanted to write it anyway ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
